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The podcast for today’s radio show is available. If you’d like the audio delivered to your devices daily, click here and subscribe. Congressman Kevin Cramer joined me for his weekly open phones segment. Not surprisingly, he got some questions about gun control and the NRA. “Yeah I actually am,” he said in response to one…

It’s pretty unusual in state politics that the leaders of both of the state’s major political parties are stepping down from those positions to take a run at statewide elected office. First it was NDGOP chair (and state Senator) Kelly Armstrong announcing that he’ll be running for the U.S. House. He’ll be making that announcement…

“North Dakotans aren’t interested in petty political infighting and want a U.S. Senator who works with Republicans and Democrats to find real solutions just as I have done during my time in the Senate,” Senate incumbent Heidi Heitkamp said in a statement responding to the news that three-term House incumbent Kevin Cramer would be challenging…

It will be months before we know who the winner in North Dakota’s Senate race will be. Either Republican Kevin Cramer or Democratic incumbent Heidi Heitkamp will be in that Senate seat come January 2019. We can declare one winner in February of 2018: Local media. The ad buys in the race are already beginning…

On my radio show today U.S. House candidate Tiffany Abentroth, a Republican, said my description of her as a “mystery candidate” helped drive a lot of interest to her campaign. She described herself as a 15 year Marine Corps veteran – she’s currently serving in the reserves – and said she just returned from Afghanistan…

I wrote yesterday that you could expect NDGOP Chairman and state Senator Kelly Armstrong to join the race for the U.S. House this week. He hasn’t made an official announcement yet – though he is scheduled to be on my radio show on Thursday at 1:30pm – but he has filed to organize a House…

A week ago I wrote about a ballot measure to raise the state’s oil taxes – one backed by current and former Democratic lawmakers – was getting a cool reception even from some of the state’s left-of-center groups. Organizations like North Dakota United (the combined teacher and public worker unions) as well as the North…

The story about Governor Doug Burgum’s Super Bowl trip just won’t go away, mostly because Burgum’s office has handled the whole thing pretty terribly. Not only should Burgum never have accepted the hospitality of Xcel Energy in the first place, but it now appears he didn’t fully disclose the entire cost of the trip. The…

Over the weekend the Fargo Forum published an editorial calling for the reinstatement of an assault weapons ban that was as shallow as it was myopic. “There is no legitimate civilian use for guns like the AR-15,” the paper writes. There are millions upon millions of Americans who own AR-15 rifles, and equivalent firearms, who might…

Congressman Kevin Cramer announced last week that he’s running for the U.S. Senate. That has set off a ripple of maneuvering across Republican political circles, and I thought I’d round up what everything looks like as of this morning. First, as I wrote over the weekend, we can expect current NDGOP Chairman, and Dickinson-area state…